Education
Clarkson University
Biology, BS 2009
Clarkson University
Basic Science, MS 2011
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Molecular and Integrative Physiology, MS 2016
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Molecular and Integrative Physiology, PhD 2019
Research Interest
Placental hypoxia is associated with several obstetrical syndromes presenting with decreased birth weight including preeclampsia and intra-uterine growth restriction. The incidence of these conditions is increased two to four fold in individuals residing in high altitude environments. Those populations with multi-generational exposure to high altitude have developed several morphological adaptations including birth weights similar to sea-level populations. For this project, we examine placental gene expression patterns of high and low altitude Native Andeans versus Europeans residing in the same locations. Our goal is to identify changes in gene expression associated with the preservation of fetal growth seen in the Native Andeans. We will then determine how different regulatory mechanisms such as DNA methylation, microRNAs, and sequence polymorphisms contribute to the changes in gene expression associated with these adaptations.
Publications
Athreya, A., Armstrong, D., Gundling, W., Wildman, D., Kalbarczyk, Z., and Iyer, R., “Prediction of Adenocarcinoma Development Using Game Theory”, in the proceedings of 39th Annual IEEE Conference of the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, pp 1668-1671
Gundling W.E. Jr., Wildman D.E. A review of inter- and intra- specific variation in the euthterian placenta, Philosphical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2015 Mar 5;370(1663).
Banfai, B., Jia, H., Khatun, J., Wood, E., Risk, B., Gundling, W.E., Jr., Kundaje, A., Gunawardena, H.P., Yu, Y., Xie, L., Krajewski, K., Strahl, B.D., Chen, X., Bickel, P., Giddings, M.C., Brown, J.B., Lipovich, L., Long noncoding RNAs are rarely translated in two human cell lines. Genome research, 2012, 22, 1646-1657.